Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509110164
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: R.W. APPLE JR. THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Retired Gen. Colin Powell says in his autobiography that ``the time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge to represent the sensible center of the American political spectrum,'' but he makes no commitment to lead such a party as its presidential candidate next year.
``To be a successful politician requires a calling that I do not yet hear,'' the 58-year-old general writes. ``I believe I can serve my country in other ways. Nevertheless, I do not unequivocally rule out a political future.''
In the heavily promoted memoir, ``My American Journey,'' which is to be published by Random House, Powell describes himself as ``a fiscal conservative with a social conscience'' and says that neither the Republican nor Democratic Party ``fits me comfortably in its present state.''
The book is excerpted at length in the Sept. 18 issue of Time magazine, which goes on sale Monday.
Powell, a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also reports that before the Persian Gulf War, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney directed him to draw up plans for the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iraq. Powell says that he answered, ``We're not going to let that genie loose.'' No nuclear weapons were employed during the war.
The U.S. commander in the gulf, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, was ``an active volcano,'' he says, with whom he had several intercontinental shouting matches on the telephone ``that were full of barracks-room profanity.''
Powell also offers a devastating critique of the Clinton administration's way of doing business, especially what he terms ``the amorphous way the administration handled foreign policy.'' National security meetings, he reports, ``meandered like graduate-school bull sessions,'' and ``backbenchers sounded off with the authority of Cabinet officers.''
While continuing to insist that he has not decided whether he wants to be president, Powell told Time in an interview published alongside the book excerpts, ``I think I have the skills to do the job.''
He said he wanted to keep his options open. The general has been telling reporters and friends for months that he would not make up his mind until he has finished the promotional tour for his book, probably in November.
``People are wondering what Forrest Gump Colin Powell stands for,'' Powell commented. ``Well, they're about to find out, as I deal with the various issues that are out there and I become a public figure again.''
If he decides to run, he has said, he will have to choose whether to seek the Republican nomination or run as an independent. The book makes it seem much more likely that he would choose the independent route. Recent polls have shown him pulling close to 30 percent of the vote in a three-way race against President Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican front-runner.
But in the Time interview, Powell did not rule out the possibility of running as a Republican, despite the party's recent rightward tilt and the overwhelming predominance of conservatives in its primary electorate.
``The party is wider than you might expect just from listening to the ordinary rhetoric,'' he asserted. ``There are a lot of Republicans who are somewhat silent and tend to be more in the moderate, Rockefeller vein. In order to appeal to the active wing of the party, most candidates are tacking to the right, and that seems to be what Bob Dole is doing.
``If I do enter politics in whatever form, I would try to make it as open a candidacy and as large a tent as the Republicans are fond of saying they have.''
Asked whether he thought he could stand up to the scrutiny attendant upon any presidential bid, he replied: ``I'm used to being misunderstood, taken out of context, attacked, so it's something I think that I can endure.''
But he said that he had ``no driving ambition'' for political office. ``My passion was for soldiering, not for politics. So the question I'm going to have to answer in my own mind is whether I can generate a similar passion. You don't do it to fool around, you do it to win. And I think that's a pretty good rule for life as well as for military operations.''
Discussing the timing of his political decision, Powell said, ``If I decide to run for office as a Republican, then I've got to get started in November, because the registrations start to close down in December. As an independent, you don't have to make a choice quite that early. But wrapping the two together, I can't just keep this up forever.''
Like Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, the Democrat who announced recently that he would not seek another term next year, Powell says in his book that ``civility is being driven from our political discourse.''
Some politicians have speculated that Bradley might agree to serve as Powell's running mate, and the two are known to have had conversations recently.
The general condemned what he called ``the political passion of those on the extreme right who seem to claim divine wisdom on political as well as spiritual matters.''
He added, ``I am disturbed by the class and racial undertones beneath the surface of their rhetoric.'' But at the same time, he said that he was offended by ``patronizing liberals who claim to know what is best for society but devote little thought to who will eventually pay the bills.''
Returning to that subject in the interview, he said that the American public is ``not entirely happy'' with ``partisan bickering and fighting that goes beyond the reasonable levels of Democratic discourse.''
Both parties believe that Medicare payments must be cut, he said, yet ``the Democratic administration is going to claim that the Republicans are doing it to pay off rich people, and the Republicans are claiming that the Democrats just don't want them to break up the welfare state.''
An independent candidacy, he conceded, would be difficult, because the candidate would get no federal matching funds yet would be subject to the same $1,000-per-person limit on individual campaign contributions.
It is not yet clear, he said, ``whether an independent run, unless it is self-financed, can actually succeed in winning a general election and winning the Electoral College.''
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB